


Instruments of War

by ThisMessIsAPlace (McFearo)



Series: Son Of A Gun [5]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 14:23:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13078731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McFearo/pseuds/ThisMessIsAPlace
Summary: "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."Ezra gives Ulysses a lesson on the history of the banjo.





	Instruments of War

He comes up the long path back to his vigil to the sound of music. Not the radio droning on with that muffled quality off the old holotapes. Courier strumming it out in real time, plucking strings of an instrument he's met in passing but once. Couldn't be anybody else.  
  
Thinks to be irritated by it -- seems flippant, that music over the Divide. Inappropriate. Not much else that would fit, either.  
  
Old songs maybe, from back East, ones that nobody alive still sings; there's no few that he still half-remembers, but it takes too long to find the beginnings of them in his mind when he tries. Gets three chords and the wrong verse deep, still forgetting how it starts, and gives up.  
  
Finds the Courier hunched over his instrument, jacket tied around his waist and flannel sleeves rolled up below his elbows. Legs dangling over the cliff. Clicks his spurs against the stone on the up beats and tilts his head back to eye Ulysses through his sunglasses instead of peering over them.  
  
"Were 'bout to switch to a dirge for you," he grumbles. "Jus' as well. Ain't a funeral song on earth that comes out right on the banjo."  
  
Ulysses sets down the pack, scavenged supplies rattling. "Not convinced there's any other song that racket does favors to. Sounds like it's fighting itself. And losing."  
  
Courier doesn't take offense at the comment -- no more offense, any case. Idles along on surly, all the bad blood between them. Doesn't waver much from there.  
  
"Funny you think so," he observes. "'S got a history."  
  
Ulysses sits. Puts a few feet between them and nods for the Courier to continue. Gets a wry look for it, the predictable swing of his interest.  
  
"'This machine surroun's hate an' forces it to surrender.' Man called Pete Seeger had that gem written on the head of his ol' banjo." Courier strums on, softly. Something rhythmic and slow -- thumb rings the short string like a bell. "Found old recordin's. He were on the radio, back 'round the Second World War. Don't s'pose you ever heard of that?"  
  
"Not the man. Know the war." He watches the Courier's fingers curiously despite himself. Left hand does the strumming, he realizes. Right's not idle: plucks spare notes in between. Song dances back and forth between his hands, never stumbling. "Birthed by the first -- nations left raw. Hungry and hateful. Men who fashioned the anger of their people into weapons that touched the throats of all the world."  
  
Courier snorts and shakes his head.  
  
"Have a different interpretation, Courier?"  
  
"No, no. Sounds jus' about like right; jus' the way you _says_ it, is all."

The song rambles on and on under the conversation. Ulysses finds he can tolerate it, for the skill it takes to make it be.

" _I'd_ call it old farts wi' too much power, gamblin' fer more outta they people's pockets. All of 'em -- doublin' down on millions of lives fer enough land to make the blood worth it. Ain't no such thing as enough land to meet that cost in life. Not even if you dredged up the bottom of the sea."  
  
"Mm. Reminds you of someone." Makes a pointed gesture at a patch on the Courier's jacket. Two headed bear snarling back at him -- at them. Both. Thought the Courier meant to carry that flag to the Dam when he brought it into the Divide, but he'd played a long game. Son of the bear, once, but they know now that he's not their own. Him and his machines.  
  
Family, though -- tribe -- those he doesn't shed, even when the leaders have failed them. When NCR is family but the Mojave, as it is, is home. Remains a hero, legend, to the men who'll do the bleeding for the bear's ambition -- even when the men pushing them to it call him a traitor.  
  
"S'pose it would," the Courier concedes. "High stakes gamblin' is all war ever is. As you said: men at the top wantin' more. Findin' reasons in hate for why the folks at the bottom oughta help 'em take it."  
  
"Said 'this machine surrounds hate.' Your Seeger didn't fall for it," Ulysses guesses.  
  
"He protested the war. All the greed in it. Still he were in that war, in the Pacific, when time come he felt it were the right thing -- he jus' fought it wi' his banjo." Courier grins. By Ulysses' estimation, it's his first time seeing it up close. First time seeing it in over four years, since a glimpse in the Divide while it still stood. First time it was ever aimed his direction.  
  
Started to think the Courier left it behind in Goodsprings, three feet in the earth.  
  
"Hated war, hated greed, hated the state of America in those days. 'All men created equal' was hollow words, an' he sang jus' as loud an' far as he could 'bout the bullshit of it all." A note twangs out of place, then another. Courier's right hand loses its step in the pattern.  
  
No. Not a misstep. Quakes run through it, seize the bone. Ring finger scrambles over the string and plucks three notes in half a second before the Courier rips his hand from the fingerboard. Clenches it into a shaking fist.  
  
"Banjo were first made by slaves, six hunnerd years ago," the Courier says loudly. Talking over a question he hasn't asked. Ulysses watches his hand quake. "Then white men took it fer a weapon, 'cause if it ain't enough to take a man's freedom I s'pose the next step is to dash all he is on the stone an' hope it keeps there. Reminds you of someone."  
  
He shakes his hand out. "Man called Joe Sweeney took their culture an' made a mockery of it. Hunnerd years on, Seeger made it a tool fer freedom; made an anthem fer the people who'd built it first to rally to.”

The Courier tilts his head back to watch the storms, hands laced over the head of his banjo. Clutches the instrument to his chest like a rifle at the ready. Ulysses waits, but there's no more. Story is through, conclusions his own to make. Gather the meaning in the thing; what it's meant through history, all the way up to this moment, to all those who’ve carried it.

Ulysses turns to watch the Divide. Same as he'd be doing without Walker. Quiet's different for the company.  
  
"Still sounds like hell," he says after a while.

Walker chuckles.

**Author's Note:**

> The banjo was first invented in the 17th century by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean.
> 
> It did not gain popularity in music made by whites until the early 19th century; the minstrel Joel "Joe" Walker Sweeney was the first recorded white musician to perform on the banjo, as a part of his racist blackface act which mocked African American culture.
> 
> Pete Seeger was a prodigious folk revivalist and cover artist. He was an activist for equal rights in the '40s, '50s and onward, and is partly credited for the popularity of the song "We Shall Overcome."


End file.
